


We All Do What We Have To

by spuffyduds



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-24
Updated: 2010-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:20:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's surprised when he and Rodney start...something.  He's less surprised when things begin to go wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We All Do What We Have To

John's hands are doing an involuntary tarantula dance against the wall, and his head clonks back hard.

"Ow," he says, but Rodney doesn't stop, which is good because what Rodney is doing is _not_ an ow, is fantastic. John stares at the top of Rodney's head, bobbing away, and he moves one hand tentatively, strokes fingertips through Rodney's hair.

"Mmmmf," Rodney says, and sucks even harder, and John comes.

He slides down the wall and gets Rodney's pants open, jerks him off with a few quick strokes, and they kind of topple into each other and just tilt there, panting, for a while.

Finally John says, "Okay, what the hell was that?"

"Apparently I have some sort of bizarre kink for people who keep saving my life," Rodney says. "Not like I find you remotely hot otherwise."

John snorts and swats him, and Rodney laughs a little, and then waves weakly at the tangle of wires hanging out of the computer console. "I guess we should let everybody know we're not all going to die. _Today_," he says.

"And start trying to figure out who planted the damn thing," John says. He taps his headset on and delivers the good news to Elizabeth.

"We would have found it a lot faster if the sensor scans would fine-tune like that for everybody," Rodney says, slapping his computer back onto his back and heading for the door. "We gotta get Atlantis to like some other people as much as it does you."

"Yeah, that'd be a load off," John says, and follows him out.

They pick their way slowly back through the rubble in the halls; it's one of many sections they haven't cleaned up and occupied yet, and their best guess is that there was hand-to-hand Ancient-Wraith battle in this part, a long time ago. Scans indicated it was still structurally sound, though, so it's a nasty surprise when the edge of a floor panel gives under Rodney's foot and he falls hard, cutting his hands on debris and getting a nasty thigh gash from the panel.

John hauls him up and puts some pressure on the cut and puts a call in to Carson.

"I suppose you think you're getting another blow job for this," Rodney says.

"Oh..._several_," John says, and keeps pressing.

***************************************************

John figures that was just a stress-reaction thing, and he manages not to think about it for the next few days while they track down the Wraith-worshiper who planted the techbomb. But the next time he and Rodney are both scheduled for a day off there's a knock on his door.

"Who is it?" he says, with a irritating little flare of hope, and when Rodney says, "Me," John has to give himself a minute to tamp down the grin that he knows is stupid-looking before he says, "Open."

The door just whines, and John says, "OPEN," louder and it slowly, jerkily opens.

Rodney steps in and looks at him, looks at the floor, looks at him again, and says, "I thought maybe--"

"Yeah," John says, and closes the door by hand.

They take their time, this time, and it's even better. When he's not amped up on almost-dying, it turns out Rodney is a serious fucking tease, and it turns out John loves that, loves being held on that edge forever until he actually _begs_ to come and Rodney gives him the smuggest smile in the galaxy and lets him.

The next day they're both back at work, and John's got teams out on the mainland practicing field maneuvers; when he gets back he gives Rodney a call, but Rodney answers with a weird mixture of profanity and Scottish accent.

"What--why are you and Carson both talking?"

Rodney says something like, "Infirmary, ow _fuck_, you _quack_," and Carson says, "Stop moving or you'll get these tweezers in your eye," and John turns his headset off and jogs to the infirmary.

For having almost been blinded in a small explosion Rodney's actually pretty mellow about it--well, screeching a lot as Carson picks the glass out of his cheek, but that's mellow for Rodney. Probably he can't get too worked up because he can't find anybody to blame.

"It was just totally random, as near as we can tell," he says. "A bunch of small Ancient tech devices in a corner that we hadn't gotten around to running any tests on, nobody'd touched them in weeks, nothing was lit up or humming, but one of them just--blew, right when I walked by."

"Freaky," John says, and tells himself _yep, freaky and random,_ and winces when Carson pulls out another shard and Rodney hits a high note.

******************************************************************

John shows up at Rodney's door, the next day they both have off. Seems only fair.

And apparently Rodney's been working the gray market, because he has plenty of lube and condoms.

They're tangled together, afterwards, and John's sweaty and sticky and sore but he has no plans to move anytime soon, and Rodney murmurs sleepily into his hair, "I could get used to this," and then Rodney goes rigid, completely tense everywhere he's touching John, which is everywhere.

"Me too," John says, softly, and Rodney relaxes against him again and they drift off to sleep.

The next day Rodney's sitting with John in the mess when he suddenly wheezes, "Oh fuck," and claws at his throat.

John very calmly pulls out the epi-pen and sticks it into Rodney's thigh, and calls Carson. And after Carson has sprinted into the mess hall with a full medkit and started checking Rodney's vitals--hardly necessary, as Rodney's clearly getting enough air again to start calling for executions of the mess hall workers--John very calmly goes into the kitchen and starts investigating.

He pokes through all the refrigerators, all the bins of dry food, and finally finds what he's looking for when he lifts the top of one of the giant liquid dispensers, built into the counters; the orange juice one has a large crack, right at the bottom, hard to see from above. It's leaking into the container of blue Kool-Aid. Rodney's favorite.

John shows it to the kitchen manager.

"You don't need to fire anybody," he says. Very calmly. "One of those random things."

*****************************************************

He goes by the infirmary again--it's starting to feel like a routine--and gives himself a minute to just enjoy Rodney ranting about the stupidness of being held for observation, before he makes himself open his mouth.

"I can't do this," he says.

"I'm _obviously_ okay, despite the best efforts of the kitchen staff to _murder_ me, and--what?"

"I can't do this," John says, and looks resolutely at the wall above Rodney's head.

"You--" Rodney looks quickly around. Nobody's near them. "You're _breaking up_ with me when I'm in a hospital bed? _Seriously_?!"

"I'm sorry," John says. The wall has a framed piece of fingerpainting from one of the kids in the Athosian daycare. It's something like a cow.

"What the _hell_?" Rodney says.

"I'm sorry. I just. Can't," John says to the sort-of-cow, because if he looks at Rodney--he can't look at Rodney. John turns on his heel, crisply, and walks out of the infirmary.

He goes back to his room and the door purrs open for him. He stretches out on his bed and spreads his hand against the nearest wall panel. He probably doesn't even need to say it out loud, but he does anyway.

"It's over," he says. "Leave him alone. Please."

He's spent a lot of time learning to interpret moods, to keep them all alive. And the warm orangey color that the wall flushes under his hand is Atlantis feeling joy, and ownership, and what she probably thinks is love.

 

\---end---


End file.
